Sybaris

Sybaris (Ancient Greek: Σύβαρις; Italian: Sibari) was an important ancient Greek city situated on the coast of the Gulf of Taranto in modern Calabria, Italy.

Σύβαρις Sibari
Remains of the theatre of Sybaris
Shown within Italy
Location	Sibari, Province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy
Region	Magna Graecia
Coordinates	39°43′0″N 16°29′38″E
Type	Settlement
Area	Approximately 500 ha (1,200 acres)
History
Builder	Achaean and Troezenian colonists
Founded	720 BC
Abandoned	445 BC
Periods	Archaic Greece to Classical Greece
Site notes
Excavation dates	1960s
Management	Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Calabria
Website	ArcheoCalabriaVirtual (in Italian)

The city was founded around 720 BC by Achaean and Troezenian settlers. Ten years later, Achaeans founded the nearby great city of Kroton. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port so that it was known as the wealthiest colony of the Greek Archaic world. Its inhabitants became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that “sybarite” and “sybaritic” have become bywords for opulence, luxury, and outrageous pleasure-seeking. Sybaris ruled smaller colonies throughout the area, and had an acropolis at Timpone della Motta near Francavilla Marittima about 10 km distant.

The city of Sybaris was destroyed in about 510 BC by its neighbour Kroton^[A]. Its population was driven out but its local colonies continued.^[1]

It was replaced by a new colony under Athenian leadership in 444/43 BC that became the city Thurii built partially on top of the older city. Thurii was destroyed in 193 BC but the Romans built the city of Copia on the same grid as Thurii. Parts of these cities are visible today.

The ruins of Sybaris/Thurii/Copia became forgotten as they were buried by sediment from the Crati river. The ruins were rediscovered and excavated from 1932. Today they can be found southeast of Sibari in the Province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy.

The city was situated close to the sea and lay between the Crathis and Sybaris rivers (from which the city derives its name).^[2] Most modern research places the city on a coastal ridge near a wetland lagoon. The rivers are now known as the Crati and Coscile. Today the Coscile feeds into the Crati about 5 km from its mouth, which passes just south of the archaeological site of the city. When Sybaris was still populated the Coscile pursued a direct course into the Gulf of Taranto, probably at a short distance to the north.^[3]

The city lay on the widest plain in modern Calabria that was renowned for its fertility and the origin of the city’s wealth.^[4]

The city lay close to sea level and the plain surrounded by the two rivers was subject to periodic flooding so that today Sybaris lies some 6 m below the surface and below groundwater level. A disastrous flood in 2013 filled the excavated site and covered it with silt. Even in 2023 powerful pumps are continuously needed to remove groundwater from the site.

Sybaris was founded in 720 BC^[5] by Is [sic] of Helice,^[6] a city in Achaea in the northern Peloponnese. The Achaeans were accompanied by a number of Troezenians who were eventually expelled by the more numerous Achaeans.^[7] The Achaean colonisation was the second great migratory wave from Greece towards the West after that of the Euboeans, concentrating instead on the Ionian coast (Metapontum, Poseidonia, Sibaris, Kroton).^[8] The Achaeans were motivated, like others of the Greek colonisation, by the lack of cultivatable land in their mountainous region and by population pressure.

The authenticity of the name of the founder (oekist) is uncertain as Strabo is the only source and it might be a corruption of [Sagar]is or [Sybar]is. Further complicating the issue is the appearance of the letters Wiis on coins of Poseidonia.^[9][B] This has been interpreted as a confirmation of Strabo’s account because Poseidonia is thought to be a colony of Sybaris.^[10]

Prosperity in the 7th and 6th century BC

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Sybaris amassed great wealth and a huge population as a result of its fertile farming land and its policy of admitting aliens to its citizenry. It was the largest Greek city in Italy and may have had 300,000 inhabitants^[11] although others give a figure of 100,000.^[12] The circumference of the city was fifty stadia (over 6 miles (9.7 km)) and the area approximately 500 hectares (1,200 acres).^[13]

Sybaris was also a dominant power in the region and ruled over 4 tribes and 25 cities.^[6] Sybaris extended its dominion across the peninsula to the Tyrrhenian Sea, where it is thought to have founded its colonies Poseidonia,^[14] Laüs^[15] and Scidrus.^[16] Poseidonia was founded in approximately 600 BC,^[17][18] In the second half of the 7th century BC the Sybarites took over from the Oenotrians the sanctuary of Athena on the Timpone della Motta as their acropolis, located 15 km to the northwest, where they regularly celebrated large festivals.^[19]

Descriptions of the wealth and luxury of Sybaris are plentiful in the ancient literature. Smindyrides was a prominent citizen who is claimed by Herodotus to have surpassed all other men in refined luxury.^[20] Diodorus describes him as the wealthiest suitor for the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He sailed from Sybaris to Sicyon in a ship of fifty oars manned by his own slaves and surpassed even Cleisthenes himself in luxury.^[21] Athenaeus makes the claim that his entourage consisted of a thousand slaves, fishermen, bird-catchers and cooks.^[22] However, his information must be false because he claims to cite Herodotus, who does not mention such a number.^[23] Claudius Aelianus even alleges that Smyndirides could not sleep on a bed of rose petals because it gave him blisters.^[24] Another Sybarite who is known by name is Alcimenes. A Pseudo-Aristotle mentions that it was said he dedicated a very expensive cloak as a votive offering at the temple of Lacinian Hera.^[25] Here Athenaeus distorts the information too: he treats the story as genuine rather than hearsay and attributes it to the real Aristotle.^[26]

Justin mentions an alliance of Sybaris with the other Achaean colonies Metapontum and Kroton against the Ionian colony Siris. This resulted in the conquest of Siris in the middle of the sixth century BC.^[27] In the second half of the sixth century BC Sybaris started minting its first coins, of which the oldest have been dated to approximately 530 BC. These coins employed the Achaean weight standard which was shared with the other Achaean colonies Kroton, Caulonia and Metapontum.^[28]

than the gods.^[48] Later he cites Phylarchus, who wrote that the Sybarites invoked the anger of Hera when they murdered thirty ambassadors from Kroton and left them unburied. He also cites Herakleides as attributing the divine wrath to the murder of supporters of Telys on the altars of the gods. Herakleides supposedly mentioned that the Sybarites attempted to supplant the Olympic Games by attracting the athletes to their own public games with greater prizes.^[49] The most direct link between luxury and corruption is evident in Athenaeus’ anecdote about the defeat of the Sybarites: to amuse themselves the Sybarite cavalrymen trained their horses to dance to flute music. When the Krotoniate army had their flute players make music the horses of the Sybarites ran over to the Krotoniates along with their riders.^[50] Strabo gives the “luxury and insolence” of the Sybarites as the reason for their defeat.^[6] Claudius Aelianus attributes the fall of Sybaris to its luxury and the murder of a lutenist at the altar of Hera.^[51]

Vanessa Gorman gives no credence to these accounts because grave sins followed by divine retribution were stock elements of fiction at the time.^[52] Furthermore, she and Robert Gorman point to Athenaeus as the origin of the embellished accounts rather than the historians he cited. He altered details of the original accounts, disguised his own contributions as those of past historians and invented new information to fit his argument that luxury leads to catastrophe. This concept was called tryphé and was a popular belief in his time, at the turn of the 2nd century AD.^[53] Peter Green likewise argues that these accounts are most likely the inventions of moralists. He points out the vast natural wealth of the city was the more likely reason it was attacked by Kroton.^[54]

This association of Sybaris with excessive luxury transferred to the English language, in which the words “sybarite” and “sybaritic” have become bywords for opulent luxury and outrageous pleasure seeking. One story, mentioned in Samuel Johnson‘s A Dictionary of the English Language, alludes to Aelianus’ anecdote about Smindyrides. It mentions a Sybarite sleeping on a bed of rose petals, but unable to get to sleep because one of the petals was folded over.^[55]

The location of the city which had been buried over time by more than 6 m of alluvial sediment from the Crati river was found only after a massive core drilling project from the early 1960s. It also lies below present groundwater level. It was also found that the later cities of Thurii and Copia were built partially above Sybaris.^[56]

Due to these reasons only a few parts of the city have been excavated: the Stombi quarter and minor test pits in the Parco del Cavallo area. On the latter site were found wonderfully decorated architectural elements from an as yet unidentified temple. The large number of finds from so small an area gives an idea of the magnificence of the city.

Other evidence about the city comes indirectly via the discovery of a sanctuary on the Timpone della Motta in nearby Francavilla Marittima where the highland site dominates the Crati river plain below.^[57]